Acapulco

Lovely Acapulco

Messy Suitcase visited Acapulco before we had to rush out of Mexico to shelter in Pennsylvania in the face of the global pandemic. Enjoy the cliff divers, the old fort and a charming local playa! 

Exibicion de Nacimiento (Nativity Show) in Leon

We stumbled upon an exhibition of Nativity Scenes from around the world on our first day exploring the central Mexican city of Leon. Enjoy the show!

 

We Have Booked Our Mexico City Lodging!

We have booked a wonderful penthouse apartment just a couple of blocks from Chapultepec Park in Mexico City for our 2 1/2 month stay this winter and early spring.

We have done a bit of research into Mexico City, talking with friends who have lived here or visited, and reading books and perusing online resources, to determine which were the safest and most fun neighborhoods to live in -- Polanco, Juarez, Roma Norte and Condesa among them. We knew we wanted to live near a park for running, near public transit, and within walking distance of restaurants and other amenities.

This apartment in Juarez was on sale for half-price because it was a new listing on Airbnb, so we are getting a big place in a great location for pauper's prices. It’s also a new apartment, and newly furnished, and the landlord says most of the other apartments in the building are not yet occupied. It has two bedrooms with large closets, a little room with a bar, a full kitchen/dining/living area, a patio, and even a roof garden, where the landlord, Eduardo encourages us to practice our instruments. He doesn't normally allow cats but is making an exception after I begged. (I think he thought it was worth it for the income.) This is the unit:

Kitchen/Dining

Living Room

Outdoor space

This location is perfect for us because it’s just a couple of blocks from Chapultepec Park, one of the largest city parks in Latin America. This park is more than twice as big as New York’s Central Park, with a zoo, seven museums, live music, and of course great running (which we missed in Tlaquepaque). There’s even a lake where I can kayak!  

One of the lakes at Chapultepec Park (Source: Pixabay)

The apartment is a couple of blocks from Paseo de laReforma,  a wide, tree-lined avenue that runs across the heart of Mexico City. We’ll be able to run down it to the city's historic district. It’s also about three blocks from Calle Chapultepec, another popular avenue with lots of restaurants and nightlife that starts at the park by the same name.

Paeo de la Reforma (Source: Fortepan — ID 73834: Adományozó/Donor: Romák Éva)

There are several close subway stations, which is good, because we will park our truck in a secure parking spot when we arrive and not use it again until we leave.

We are confident this is an apartment where we – and the cats – will be able to spend a safe, happy two and a half months in Mexico City.

By Lisa Hamm-Greenawalt

León, Mexico: El Centro Histórico

Rather than sitting in long lines at gas stations, we turned left and drove to León, where we discovered an exciting city we had never heard of before! On Day 1, we visited the historic center, el Centro Historico. We saw churches, plazas, even bullfighters, and heard some truly indescribable music!

Check out the video on our Messy Suitcase YouTube Channel.

Back in the Saddle Again

It’s hard to believe it has been seven months since we left Mexico. A brief summer interlude in Vermont getting one of our vacation homes ready to sell and settling our youngest child, Gavin, into Champlain College in Burlington turned into a much longer stretch in the USA when Bob’s mother, Jane, called us in August to say she had just been diagnosed with terminal cancer.

So after spending three months painting a house, tiling a kitchen, planting two gardens, refinishing a wooden floor, staining two decks, replacing multiple windows, and doing more tasks than I care to remember on both houses – punctuated, thank God, by a couple of long weekends in Montreal and Burlington and a lot of visits to local craft breweries – we moved into Jane’s house in Mechanicsburg, PA, in October to care for her in her last months.

Nanowrimo winner's certificate

While living here, Lisa signed up for National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo) in November and wrote a long-postponed book, and Bob threw himself into editing of his many videos from our time in Mexico and started populating the Messy Suitcase YouTube channel. We both have spent countless hours studying Spanish and playing our instruments (Bob saxophone, Lisa guitar). We spent 9 days in Cancun in November, during a period when Jane was doing better and we needed a break.

We also had a chance to spent time with some of Lisa’s family members around the holidays, and got to know Jane’s neighbors in her over-55 community. As her health deteriorated, we became close to her regular visitors from Homeland Hospice, who became our family’s lifeline: her CNA (certified nursing assistant) Sherry, who came every day to bathe and dress here; her hospice nurse Hannah, who came weekly; and our social worker Pam, who supported us in too many ways to count.

Meanwhile, we bathed Jane and dressed her and fed her and loved her. We watched Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy with her. The kids came home for Christmas break and got to spend time with their grandmother. Bob’s sister Beth came to visit regularly. We celebrated New Year's Eve in her bedroom.

Jane celebrating New Year's Eve
 with champagne and shrimp

And on Jan. 7, 2020, at the age of 89, Jane Greenawalt left us.

Now the funeral is over, the spawn are back in school, and we are officially empty nesters. Although Jane’s stuff needs to be sorted and dispersed, and her condo needs to be fixed up and put on the market, we are deferring that till the summer.

It’s time for us to get back to our lives, at least for a while. So we are planning to return to Mexico later this month and spend the rest of winter and half of spring there. We’ll return in late April, before Gavin’s school lets out for the summer.

This time we are headed for Mexico City! We are excited at the prospect of living in a big city, after spending the summer in rural Vermont and the fall in this Harrisburg suburb. We are currently deciding between several condos in a safe neighborhood – Condesa, Roma Norte or Polanco – near a huge park (a requirement for us as runners). We are also looking at language schools, because we plan to study Spanish every day, at least for the first month, the way we did in Tlaquepaque last year. It will only be for two hours a day this time, because Lisa is editing her book and we want time to enjoy the city.

We’ll keep you posted as things develop! Right now the plan is to leave Jan. 28 and drive our trusty Toyota Tacoma (with two cats on board; the third now lives with Gavin at school) slowly south, stopping in Cincinnati, Memphis and Austin on the way so we can see some friends and take some breaks from the road. We should arrive in CDMX (Ciudad de Mexico, Spanish for Mexico City) on Super Bowl Sunday. Wish us luck! Hasta luego!

Why was Bob Fretting?

Check out our latest video on the Messy Suitcase YouTube channel -- Crossing The Border (a.k.a. Why was Bob fretting?) #messysuitcase #mexico #retirement 

On the Road to Mexico

How do you get 3 people, 3 cats, 3 musical instruments and multiple suitcases and bags to Mexico to start a new life? You drive. 37 HOURS.

Welcome to Messy Suitcase on You Tube! Part 1: Launching a New Life

Messy Suitcase is on YouTube!

We are officially launching the Messy Suitcase YouTube channel. Please visit, subscribe, and follow us on our adventures in Mexico and beyond!  Because life is short and the world is big.  #messysuitcase #lifeisshorttheworldisbig

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Leaving Tlaquepaque & Guadalajara

It’s time to leave Tlaquepaque and move on to our next destination, Guanajuato.

We’ve been here nearly 4 months, a little longer than we planned to stay in any one place, but wanted to have a familiar, reasonably accessible place for Aryk to call home on their Spring Break from Keele University in England.

With only a few days left, we’ve been going over our lists of things we wanted to do here and we’ve whittled it down to just a few.

We’re Sad to Go

Both Lisa and I are feeling a little sad about moving on. There is a lot to like about Tlaquepaque and Guadalajara. We love Tlaquepaque’s colorful, artistic character. We love its relaxed, friendly vibe. We love living within easy walking distance of the TLQ town square, Jardin Hidalgo, and all of the energy, activities and food options there. Lisa has recently started making Mexican friends. 

We'll miss the regular routines that drive the city -- the water guy's cries of "a-gUAAAAA!," the Zeta Gas truck's song, the ringing bell of the trash men, the double chiming of the church clocks in Jardin Hidalgo every 15 minutes around the clock, the early-morning cacophony of dogs and roosters, the  music in the streets (whether a Mariachi band or a single hombre singing acapella), the busy mercados (marketplaces) and tianguis (pop-up markets) with countless people in your face trying to sell you their products.

We love all of the activities available in Guadalajara and the fact that a subway from our neighborhood to Zapopan, on the other side of Guadalajara, is scheduled to open sometimes in 2020. And with a new road under construction, Guadalajara could soon be just two and a half hours from the Pacific coast.

There are some things in Tlaquepaque that aren’t perfect. The running, bike riding and our apartment are barely acceptable, but our home's location has been perfect for accessing the town square. We’re definitely going to miss being here. We’ve even started discussing that this area may be a place we want to come back to and spend even more time getting to know, perhaps living in Guadalajara proper. But first, we need to experience more of Mexico.

In the meantime, we’re busy revisiting our favorite places and restaurants for one last time.

Our loyalty to Guadalajara won us GDLt-shirts
at a promo event in Lake Chapala last weekend!

 Today, it’s on to Guanajuato!

Vermont – A Change in Plans

Over 15 years ago, when we were living in New York, we bought a house in Vermont that we began making plans to retire to. 

We called the six-bedroom chalet The Lake House because it has a private dock on 200-acre Lake Rescue. Lisa and the kids spent half the summers there, while the kids attended Farm & Wilderness Day Camps, and I came up by train from Manhattan every weekend and took two weeks vacation in late August.  Often extended family members and friends would join us. 

When the house wasn't rented out (which is how we paid for it), we spent winter weekends there, as the kids learned to ski at nearby Okemo. We went up in spring and fall to do projects, such as building a new back deck and tiling the kitchen. We read in the hammock, watched shooting stars from the hot tub, pulled the kids around in inner tubes from the back of a Zodiac inflatable boat. Lisa taught a number of children how to fish off the dock, and got up early many mornings to kayaked in the mist. 

The Lake House

 Even when we moved to Colorado and couldn't get there anymore, we didn’t sell the place because of all of the fond memories. We just rented it out year-round, going up every couple of years just to check on it and make repairs. But as our retirement thinking evolved, we wondered whether we even wanted to go there after we stopped working. It was so cold compared to Colorado.

However, as part of our circuitous route to Mexico, we visited family and spent Christmas on the East Coast. That included five weeks, including Thanksgiving, in our house in Vermont. Ski resorts in Vermont typically try to get some runs open by Thanksgiving, usually with man-made snow, but we were "treated" to several unexpected snowfalls and temperatures that only on a few days exceeded freezing. Ludlow had gotten three feet of snow by the time we left.

Yet, even though it was cold and icy, we rediscovered what we loved about Vermont. We got up each morning, shoveled a new path to the hot tub on the back deck, and enjoyed an hour of warm, splashy solitude with mimosas while gazing up at snow-covered pine trees. 

Snowy hot tub morning

In addition to hours and hours spent maintaining the house, hiring staff, and replacing a TV and a mattress, we played Pinochle or UNO at night. We cuddled up watching movies. Lisa had a rom-com marathon with Grandma. We worked on a 1,000-piece puzzle. We discovered new restaurants and revisited old favorites. We walked through the shops in downtown Ludlow, and did Christmas shopping in charming Woodstock. We enjoyed ice cream multiple times at Sewards, our favorite ice cream shop in Rutland. Lisa reconnected with friends from her summertime church. We had family members visit with babies that drooled all over Duplo and threw scraps of food to the cats. 

It was divine.

To add to our rediscovery, Lexie plans to attend Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont, beginning in August, and we want to help her get settled in. So instead of flying Lexie to college, we plan to drive back up from Mexico to Vermont in July and spend a few months at our house. We can enjoy Vermont in the summertime, our favorite season. Lexie may be able to get a summer job at the little store up the road, or the Italian restaurant down the road.  After we get Lexie settled into college in late August and return for Parents' Weekend in late September, we may as well stay and enjoy the foliage season! Then we will head back to Mexico. 

That may be the plan for every year Lexie is in college -- back to Vermont for the summer so she has a home to go to and make a little money, then return to Mexico for the remaining nine months of the year. 

We think this is a great way for us to get our fix of Vermont during a beautiful time of the year and still explore the world!

Running in the snow

Building a snowman

Visiting the Green Mountain Sugar House

Discovering Outback Pizza

Baking Christmas cookies

Why I made the decision to permanently stop working

When Lisa and I started talking about traveling after the kids graduated from high school, the discussion always included doing some sort of part-time work. First, when we thought we would travel the United States in an RV, that talk included doing seasonal work at an Amazon warehouse or being the host at a campsite. Later, I considered doing some part-time database or project management work, or even working for my then-employer part-time.

However, my thinking started changing last February. Lexie’s High School’s Girls Lacrosse team didn’t have a coach and the season was starting soon. I approached my boss about shifting my work hours by an hour a day for 10 weeks so I could coach and keep the team alive. I never expected to get the pushback that I got. From my perspective, this wasn’t something that I sought to do for my benefit, and I didn’t even consider myself a coach. I just felt I would be able to empower 20 girls to play a sport for 10 weeks that they might not be able to play otherwise, until a new coach could be found for the next year.

I reminded my boss that I had always done everything they had asked, including trips that others in the organization essentially refused to take. Yet I was told that in all their years in business they had NEVER been asked to approve something like this, and that it sounded like a second job. They wanted a complete schedule, which was reasonable, and an assurance from me that I would make myself available for any calls they wanted me to be on at that time of day. I reminded my boss that they routinely worked around my co-workers’ schedules and that the times I was asking to shift were also at the end of the East Coast day of two of my co-workers.

In the end, my boss very reluctantly approved my request, but their attitude made me realize that they didn’t really care about me. It made me question my dedication and loyalty to them and the organization when there was no reciprocity.

In addition, I had begun to get fed up with the actions of one of my co-workers. Up until this point, I had made extraordinary efforts to keep a cordial and professional relationship with them. I went well out of my way to keep them happy, even when I knew some of the things I did to maintain peace were not in the best interests of the organization. However, they already had had a very contentious relationship with my predecessor, and I had personally seen several knock-down, drag-out fights between them and my boss. I also knew that they had had a bad relationship with one of our clients, which I worked very hard to repair when I first took the job.

When I started pushing back and or asking for business justification for some of their requests, they didn’t like that and privately complained to our boss, even threatening to quit. Our boss, without ever asking for my side of the story, immediately and completely blamed me. This just reinforced my feeling that I wasn’t appreciated or even listened to. I was made to feel that everything that was happening was completely and totally my fault and it was my responsibility to fix it.

And I was gone

With that, I was gone. I no longer wanted to work for my boss and I no longer wanted to work with my co-worker. Any thoughts of working part-time for them in the future evaporated. I couldn’t leave fast enough. To make matters worse, my boss insisted that I fly to San Francisco earlier than usual for a scheduled staff meeting so that I could spend an excruciating afternoon alone with my co-worker in an attempt to resolve any conflicts we had.

Over the next several weeks, I made my final decision and gave my boss three weeks notice of my impending departure. I essentially couldn’t take another day dealing with both of them. My boss’s reaction to my notice was hostility, accusing me of abandoning the organization, which only reinforced the fact that I made the right decision. Once again, I had never been treated so badly. When my boss flew out to Denver for a transition briefing, they did not even offer to take me to lunch before their return flight, and I once again felt disrespected.

I continued to assist with keeping things running until a replacement was found. But it wasn’t until a month and a half after I finally finished that they even sent me an email thanking me for my 4 ½ years of work for them and the organization and the award-winning site I built.

Earlier than I planned

So I stopped working sooner than I had wanted, but I just couldn’t take it anymore. Financially, yes, it was a little soon, but the market was doing well and I knew we would be ok. I’ve worked for many people in multiple organizations over the years and this boss was, by far, the worst person I had ever worked for.

In some ways, it is sad that my working career had to end this way, but in others, it doesn’t make me look back. I never want to work for someone like that ever again, and I’m fortunate in that I don’t have to. Good riddance to them and on to something much more enjoyable!